one month

We celebrated Moriah's one month birthday this week--a homemade ice cream cake, an ultrasound appointment, and a sky dive all seemed fitting tributes in their own way.

I remembered I knew how to make ice cream cakes this week. In high school, I worked at TCBY (there's a fun piece of trivia for you)--an awesome job for a complete candy-addict (which I continue to be...I still dream of those entire boxes of candy lining the shelves of Tic-bee's backroom...mmmmm). It was strange to remember this as some out-of-the-blue lightbulb "I-can-do-that" jolt. Since Moriah's been born I've been having a lot of those. Some are entirely random--ice cream cake making, driving the minivan for the first time in three weeks, going back-to-school shopping for the boys. Other times, I have these "I've been there" or "I can do that" jolts that are much more profound. Yesterday, when explaining to a friend that no, Moriah's birth has not "shaken" my faith, as asking God "why" and being royally pissed off at him is a been-there-done-that experience a few years old. Or knowing where to get my photo ID for Children's Hospital. Or making clear choices about when to cry, and for how long...and then turning it off, picking up, and moving forward. In general, I find I'm both returning to my "normal" life (when normal does not include working full-time and studying for a doctoral program, which feels still strange) AND returning to the tried-and-true strategies I've used before to survive (or thrive) in the midst of major life transitions (though I still have yet to journal, as I can't find the words, and am anxiously awaiting my 6-week doctor's visit so I can return to my morning swims). A morning cup of coffee helps. When I have quiet moments, prayer and singing helps. Asking for help helps. Reading novels. Watching the boys play basketball in the driveway. Cooking. TLC and Oprah reruns. These are all helping.

The ultrasound appointment was a marker, too. It marked her one-month birthday week, though the doctor was not aware of it, and it marked one of many, many times when we have been (and will be) confronted by the word "normal" throughout Moriah's life. As in, her upper GI looked "normal" this week. And yet, in the world of special needs, "normal" is not a word we use--apparently (so my friends of children with special needs and my reading tells me), we use "typical," as in "Moriah is gaining weight more slowly than a typical child." Jason and I have talked a lot about this...about what our own expectations of "normal" were in anticipation of her birth, and how they are changing, and will change. On the one hand, we've always given lip service to the idea that the way we chose to start a family--by adopting before we tried for biological children--was just as "risky" as birthing. When people have marveled at how we chose to adopt, not as a second choice, but as a first choice, and that we chose to adopt a child with medical needs, we've always said, "well, yes, but when we birth a child, we could birth a child with medical needs, too." And yet. And yet somehow we didn't really think it would happen to us. Maybe what we really thought was that this was our chance to have a child without a background of baggage...ironic, given that we actually have "medical history" to write out at each doctor's visit for Moriah, even though she's only a month old. Maybe what our boys' story, and Moriah's story, are teaching us, for real this time, is that all of us ARE the "norm"--and the norm is baggage, and history, and issues, and lots of things that need lots of love, and care. We're still feeling the sadness of that on Moriah's behalf on occasion, but mostly, we're realizing how much we needed our idea of "normal" challenged and re-framed.

And the jump. Today around 3:00 pm my husband was literally falling from the sky, having jumped from a perfectly good airplane with a guy strapped to his back. Before he got into this itsy-bitsy plane (seriously, you couldn't have paid me to GET in that thing, let alone jump OUT of it), I commented to him how just a couple weeks ago, we were leaving the NICU, and here we were, outside in the sunshine (well, Moriah and I under a tarp, but still...) and doing something new, and even (dare I say it?) FUN. Jason's dad took him and his 2 brothers jumping today and they had a great time...and I had a great time, just being outside, and watching the boys play with their cousins, and feeling like I had the first summer day I've had all summer, sweating and calm with Moriah in my arms for hours. It was a crazy thing to do, crazier still, it seemed to me, so soon after Moriah's birth, but the date had been set, and jumping has been on Jason's "bucket list" since I met him (I think he was always disappointed his military years didn't afford him the opportunity) and so I was so happy to go, and to see him get to do something for himself, especially after the way he has done everything around here for weeks as Moriah and I have recovered.

So Moriah's been with us--or, out of me, more appropriately--one month. I feel like we've lived a few months in that time, honestly...so much has happened I'm not sure how it fit into 30-some days. But there is grace again, in the form of a cold piece of cake, a "normal" ultrasound, and a fall from the sky. Reminding us that this is life--in all its craziness--and that we can find a mooring, somewhere between the seriousness and the fun, the death-defying and the death-come-knocking. A beloved mentor from my college years called this week and asked me, basically, what has moored me in this month. My faith, certainly, which lends me perspective even when my emotions are raw or overdrawn. And after that, I would say, the love of my husband which has overwhelmed me again and again these last weeks. After that, quiet moments with Moriah, when I hold her and feel her tiny, hole-y heart beating near mine, and realize again the gift I have been given, and its fragility.